12 Booklist July2017 www.booklistreader.com
fetishized collections are all presented with
great economical detail and reveal volumes
about the man and his life. Then there are the
performances. Wen does what only few can:
poetically express the artistic importance of Bip
the Clown, Marceau’s iconic Everyman character and inspired offspring of Chaplin’s Tramp
and Decroux’s Pierrot Pierrot. Wen crafts
diamond-cut paragraphs that place the reader
in Marceau’s enthralled audiences. A lustful affair turns into a long and loving partnership in
three minutes of walking with intention and
emotion, followed by a scene depicting David
and Goliath, with Marceau as Bip playing all
roles. These invaluable descriptions by a writer
versed in the tradition of making the nonvisible vibrant should be read slowly and with the
same seemingly effortless focus Marceau gave
to his art. —Michael Ruzicka

Poetry

Where Now: New and SelectedPoems.

By Laura Kasischke.

July 2017. 256p. Copper Canyon, $30 (9781556595127).

811.

With the lines “and you were warned that it
would be / a happy song followed by a brutal
fact,” Kasischke reveals her
tug-of-war poetic intention.
The poems in this collection, which spans her long
poetic career (she is also a
very successful novelist), frequently juxtapose mundane
daily life with metaphysical
ponderings or mythological
imaginings. No poem is simply what it appears.
For instance, the gorgeous “At Gettysburg” begins with a mother watching a beloved son play
soldier at an actual Civil War battlefield before
she imagines herself the photographer of dead
soldiers. She then turns to a fairy-tale sensibility where time and space are altered before
returning to her son playing dead, then back to
extraordinary realms, where she is both executioner and creator, then in conversation with
God, before being a real mother again, with her
son helping locate them on the visitor’s map.
Such shape-shifting—freely following contrasting or associative thoughts or symbolism—is
the work of a poet who trusts her process, and
trusts readers to follow wherever she goes. This
large, thought-provoking collection demonstrates Kasischke’s unique poetic vision, where
wonder is always delivered with a dose of relatable pain. —Janet St. John

Geography & Travel

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe.

By Kapka Kassabova.

Aug. 2017. 400p. Graywolf, paper, $16

(9781555977863). 914.

As Kassabova travels through the hinter-lands of Bulgaria, along the border where thatcountry meets Turkey and Greece, she discov-ers that borders shape the lives of both thosewho attempt to cross them and those who livenearby. Kassabova, whose family immigratedfrom Bulgaria to New Zealand, layers the taleof her travels with insights into the country’sSoviet past. Along the way, she meets borderguards who have seen people survive the un-thinkable, a would-be border crosser who wasimprisoned, villagers who maintain their gripon traditions even as their hometowns arewithering away, and a wealthy man who onceworked for state security and who warns heragainst asking questions. The lessons of thepast are brought starkly to life as she witnessesthe trickle of refugees from Syria, before thattrickle became a flood. Border offers a dark lookat a world of smugglers and spies, where thepast maintains its hold even as people struggleto reach a brighter future. —Bridget Thoreson

Notes on a Foreign Country: AnAmerican Abroad in a Post-

American World.

By Suzy Hansen.

Aug. 2017. 288p. Farrar, $26 (9780374280048). 914.961.
Americans are taught that they are exceptional, brave, and fearless. Hansen’s must-read
book makes the argument that Americans,
specifically white Americans,
are decades overdue in examining and accepting their
country’s imperial identity. In
2007, journalist Hansen won
a fellowship to live abroad
and chose Turkey because
American author James Baldwin wrote he felt more like
himself, a gay, black man living in the 1960s,
in Istanbul than New York. How could that
be? Hansen’s argument goes beyond the factual
assertion that Americans are ignorant of the
country’s long, complicated, invasive histories
with many other countries around the world.
She makes the paradigm-breaking claim that
what Americans are taught about their national
and personal identities disallows the very acquisition of this knowledge. When a mine collapses
in the Turkish city Soma and she asks for the
cause, she’s stunned that people want to talk
about American foreign policy from the 1950s.
Only after years of living in Turkey can Hansen
frame interview questions with an awareness
of her American biases. Hansen builds her
winning argument by combining personal examination and observation with geopolitical
history lessons. She is a fearless patriot, and this
is a book for the brave. —Emily Dziuban

History

God’s Wolf: The Life of the MostNotorious of All Crusaders, Scourgeof Saladin.

By Jeffrey Lee.

Aug. 2017. 320p. illus. Norton, $27.95 (9780393609691).

956.014.

The crusader knight Raynald of Châtillon(1125–87) has suffered bad press from foeand friend alike. Muslim chroniclers of thegreat sultan Saladin, Raynald’s most effec-tive adversary, naturally don’tapprove of him. Further-more, the most esteemedChristian eyewitness to hisdeeds, Walter of Tyre, be-longed to the other partyvying for predominancein the Crusader states andisn’t trustworthy on him.Lee presents a balanced account, emphati-cally not denying Raynald’s violence andcruelty but pointing up his superior di-plomacy, especially as a politically astutemarriage broker, his utter loyalty—unlikethat of Raymond III of Tripoli, who ran outon the Battle of Hattin, ensuring Raynald’sdefeat and death (at Saladin’s own hands, asthe sultan had sworn) and, eventually, thefall of crusader-conquered Jerusalem—andhis fearless leadership from the forefront ofbattle. One particularly signal achievementof Raynald’s was the raid by sea of bothshores of the Red Sea, including the only sal-lies toward Medina and Mecca ever made byinfidels. Lee’s clear narration and reasonableapproach vault Raynald back to the heightshe deserves to occupy as a knight and a Cru-sader. An outstanding addition to popularliterature on an enduringly influential his-torical epoch. —Ray Olson

Gorbachev: His Life and Times.

By William Taubman.

Sept. 2017. 928p. illus. Norton, $39.95
(9780393647013). 947.085.

Eclipsed for many by the triumphant image of Ronald Reagan, victor of the Cold
War, Reagan’s chief antagonist, Mikhail

Gorbachev, emerges in this
revealing biography as a
daring leader who risked
and finally suffered geopolitical defeat precisely
because of what he would
not surrender: his own
deeply humane hopes for
transforming his country
into a prosperous, democratic, and free regime enjoying harmonious relationships with
the West. After many hours of interviews
and years of archival research, Taubman offers hard-won glimpses into the heart of a
dreamer sharing a body with the mind of a
cagey political operative. With insights comparable to those that won the Pulitzer Prize
for his biography of Khrushchev, Taubman
here limns the difficulties Gorbachev confronted as he pursued perestroika and glasnost
against resistance from hard-liners ready to
drive him from office (perhaps into prison),
even as liberal activists censured him for
stalling. Though Gorbachev reshaped the
world, Taubman does not ignore the Soviet
leader’s ultimate failure as the liberalization
process slipped out of his control and finally
broke down in ways since exploited by the